lous! To be pleas'd with what pleases the crowd! Now, when I laugh I always laugh alone.

Double Dealer, Act 1. Sc. 4.

So fharp-fighted is pride in blemishes, and fo willing to be gratified, that it takes up with the very flighteft improprieties; fuch as a blunder by a foreigner in fpeaking our language, efpecially if the blunder can bear a fenfe that reflects on the speaker:

Quickly. The young man is an honest man.

Caius. What fhall de honeft man do in my closet? dere is no honeft man dat fhall come in my closet.

Merry Wives of Windfor.

Love-fpecches are finely ridiculed in the fol

lowing paffage.

Quoth he, My faith as adamantine,

As chains of destiny, I'll maintain ;
True as Apollo ever spoke,

Or oracle from heart of oak;

And if you'll give my flame but vent,
Now in clofe hugger mugger pent,
And shine upon me but benignly,
With that one, and that other pigfney,
The fun and day fhall fooner part,
Than love, or you, shake off my heart;
The fun that fhall no more difpenfe
His own but your bright influence :
I'll carve your name on barks of trees,
With true love-knots, and flourishes;

That shall infuse eternal spring,
And everlasting flourishing:
Drink ev'ry letter on't in ftum,

And make it brisk champaign become.
Where-e'er you tread, your foot shall fet
The primrose and the violet;

All fpices, perfumes, and sweet powders,
Shall borrow from your breath their odours;
Nature her charter fhall renew,

And take all lives of things from you;
The world depend upon your eye,
And when you frown upon it, die.
Only our loves fhall ftill furvive,
New worlds and natures to outlive;
And, like to herald's moons, remain
All crefcents, without change or wane.

Hudibras, Part 2. canto 1.

Irony turns things into ridicule in a peculiar manner; it confifts in laughing at a man under difguife of appearing to praise or speak well of him. Swift affords us many illuftrious examples of that fpecies of ridicule. Take the following.

By these methods, in a few weeks, there ftarts up many a writer, capable of managing the profoundest and most univerfal fubjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his common-place book be full ! And if you will bate him but the circumftances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of tranfcribing from others, and digreffing from himself, as often as he shall

fee

fee occafion; he will defire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a booksellers's shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean, for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title, fairly inscribed on a label; never to be thumbed or greafed by ftudents, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a library; but when the fulness of time is come, fhall happily undergo the trial of purgatory, in order to afcend the sky *.

I cannot but congratulate our age on this peculiar felicity, that though we have indeed made great progrefs in all other branches of luxury, we are not yet debauched with any high relish in poetry, but are in this one tafte lefs nice than our ancestors.

If the Reverend clergy fhewed more concern than others, I charitably impute it to their great charge of fouls; and what confirmed me in this opinion was, that the degrees of apprehenfion and terror could be diftinguished to be greater or lefs, according to their ranks and degrees in the church t.

A parody must be distinguished from every fpecies of ridicule it enlivens a gay fubject by imitating fome important incident that is serious: A a 4

it

*Tale of a Tub, fect. 7.

A true and faithful narrative of what paffed in London during the general confternation of all ranks and degrees of mankind.

it is ludicrous, and may be rifible; but ridicule is not a neceffary ingredient. Take the following examples, the firft of which refers to an expreffion of Mofes.

The skilful nymph reviews her force with care:
Let fpades be trumps! fhe faid, and trumps they were.
Rape of the Lock, Canto iii. 45,

The next is in imitation of Achilles's oath in Homer.

But by this lock, this facred lock, I swear,
(Which never more fhall join its parted hair,
Which never more its honours fhall renew,
Clipp'd from the lovely head where late it grew),
That while my noftrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, fhall for ever wear.
He spoke, and fpeaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.

Ibid. Canto iv. 133.

The following imitates the hiftory of Agamemnon's fceptre in Homer.

Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her fide,
(The fame, his ancient perfonage to deck,
Her great-great grandfire wore about his neck,
In three feal-rings; which after, melted down,
Form'd a vaft buckle for his widow's gown :
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells the jingled, and the whiftle blew ;

Thea

Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs,
Which long fhe wore, and now Belinda wears.)
Ibid. Canto v. 87.

Though ridicule, as obferved above, is no neceffary ingredient in a parody, yet there is no oppofition between them: ridicule may be fuccessfully employed in a parody: and a parody may be employed to promote ridicule; witness the following example with respect to the latter, in which the goddefs of Dulnefs is addreffed upon the fubject of modern education:

Thou gav'ft that ripeness, which so foon began,
And ceas'd fo foon, he ne'er was boy nor man;
Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast,
Safe and unfeen the young Æneas paft *;
Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunn'd with his giddy larum half the town.

Dunciad, b. iv. 287.

The interpofition of the gods, in the manner of Homer and Virgil, ought to be confined to ludicrous fubjects, which are much enlivened by fuch interpofition handled in the form of a parody; witness the cave of Spleen, Rape of the Lock, canto 4; the goddess of Difcord, Lutrin, canto 1.; and the goddess of Indolence, canto 2. Those who have a talent for ridicule, which is feldom united with a tafte for delicate and refined

* En. 1. 1. At Venus obfcuro, &c.